Library Guides: ENGL 202A: Effective Writing in the Social Sciences: Social Sciences Research

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Email-a-Vairo Librarian: vairolibrary@psu.edu

Phone-a-Vairo Librarian: 610.892.1380

Text-a-Vairo Librarian: 610.314.7890

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Start with these databases, and remember to think about what type of information will be helpful for you in your research. You may not need scholarly or academic articles!

Opposing Viewpoints This link opens in a new window
Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center provides research and background information on social issues. The database contains the essays from the Opposing Viewpoints series, supplemented by, statistics, primary documents, links to websites, and full-text magazine and newspaper articles. Keywords: hot topics, current events, social issues, social trends, English 15, CAS 100, background information, general interest, contemporary issues, overviews.
Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center provides research and background information on social issues. The database contains the essays from the Opposing Viewpoints series, supplemented by statistics, primary documents, links to websites, and full-text magazine and newspaper articles. Keywords: hot topics, current events, social issues, social trends, English 15, CAS 100, background information, general interest, contemporary issues, overviews.
Academic Search Complete (Ebsco) This link opens in a new window
Thousands of full text articles covering a broad range of subjects.
Academic Search Complete is a comprehensive scholarly, multi-disciplinary full-text database, with more than 5,300 full-text periodicals, including 4,400 peer-reviewed journals. In addition to full text, this database offers indexing and abstracts for more than 9,300 journals and a total of 10,900 publications including monographs, reports, conference proceedings, etc. The database features PDF content going back as far as 1865, with the majority of full text titles in native (searchable) PDF format.

Below are a couple worksheets to help keep yourself organized while researching.

The first is a keyword worksheet, which will help you think about different ways to talk about your topic.

The second is a research log, which will help you to keep track of which databases you've searched in already and what keywords were successful in your search.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Search of scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, including theses, books, abstracts and articles.
Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Once you set your institutional preferences, links to full-text, if available at Penn State, should appear.

When searching Google Scholar from home, manage scholar settings so that you are recognized as a Penn State student:

click on the three stacked, horizontal lines on the upper right of the Google Scholar search page
click on SETTINGS
click on LIBRARY LINKS
enter Pennsylvania State University and click on the search icon
when "Pennsylvania State University" appears, place a check in the box preceding it and click on SAVE

After searching in Google Scholar, use the Get it! @ Penn State link to access full text journal articles.